Modern Britain demands a modern airport

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The same rural fantasies projected at the Olympic opening have delayed Heathrow’s third runway for 40 years

Only one thing was missing from the first artist’s impression of the set for the opening ceremony for the London Olympics — hobbits. Otherwise the bucolic sheep-and-meadows fantasy designed by Danny Boyle was exactly The Shire, as J. R. R. Tolkien described it — maybe somewhere just off the chalky road between Nobottle and Bywater.

Hobbit Olympia could hardly be said to represent modern Britain — one of the most urbanised countries in the world. Rather it celebrates an aspect of our national psyche, a yearning for something past and, perhaps, a desire to escape from the relentless demands of modernity. Dickens, for